Los Angeles daily herald., 1887-08-15
WHAT Is HYPNOTISM?
The way 1t Was Discovered and
Explained by ~ Physician.
From the Leisure Hour

Explained by ~ Physician.
From the Leisure Hour
In 1S41 James Braid was in practice
as physician at Manchester. Thither
came La Fontaine lecturing on mes
merism and performing experiments
of the familiar type, illustrating the
theory of the stronger will and the
dominant idea. Braid was interested
in his lectures, suspected the expert
ments to be impostures and declared
the theory to be false. He
worked at the theory himself,
and in the years following
issued several books containing most
remarkable experience regarding what
he called neurohypnotism, but which
after him was for long time known
as Braidism, and is now described in
all the dictionaries and textbooks as
hypnotism. Braid found that most of
the phenomena could be self-induced.
That man, 50 to speak, could mes
merize himself by fixing his gaze on
inanimate object and concentrating
his attention. He thus, to his salts
faction, proved the subjective
nature of the influence. To talk
of animal magnetism from an
inanimate object was absurd. Braid
ism met with much opposition. 1t
was furiously attacked by mesmerists,
whose very citadel it threatened, and
it was received with horror by large
section of the public, who refused to
believe in the feasibility OF its phe-
nomena. There was no mystery as to
the method of procedure. All that
Braid did was to take any bright OBJ
ject, such as his lancet-case, between
the thumb and fore and middle fin
gers of the left hand, and hold it from
eight to fifteen inches from the eye of
the patient in such a position above
the forehead as was necessary to
produce the greatest strain on the
eyes and eyelids. On this bright point
the patient was to stare fixedly. In
ordinary cases in fifteen seconds, if
the patients limbs were lifted, they
would evince tendency to remain in
the position to which they had been
raised; in few seconds more a
strange feeling of exaltation would
spread through him; in few seconds
more he would be asleep and insensi-
BILE to pain.
There never is anything new, and,
of course, there was nothing new in
Braid's discovery. The magicians
used to hypnotic their believers by
making them gaze at the scratches on
the crystal sphere. The Egyptian
priests Snypnotized theirs by making
them stare at the mystic signs on the
bright metal mirror. The anchorites
lifted their eyes fixedly to the firma-
ment and went off into ecstacy. The
monks of Mount Athos hung their
heads and looked downward until they
felt their senses swim away, and the
Indian ascetics of 1887 gain hypnotic
power by squirting at the tips of their
noses, as their ancestors have done
for ages.
AS to mesmerizing animlls with the
"passes," which, grantil... Braid's
theory, is the same thing rs hypno-
tizing them, there are innumerable
examples. The iguana can be hypno-
tized, so can the cobra, so can the
turtle. Secure their fixed attention
for minute and they are helpless.
As it is with an animal, so it is with a
man. IlOlu his uIlulNlueu dlteHtlOl
for a short while and he will fall away
into state resembling catalepsy.
Let him look at glittering
piece of glass, diamond or
stud or emerald pin, and be-
fore his eyes have begun to ache he
will collapse. There is case on
record of student who was told he
would be hypnotized from a distance
at O'Clock on certain day. He was
to look at the clock little before to
see how the time was going. An UNI
pire, well-known physician, was
told off to watch him. AT a minute
or two to four he looked at the clock
and his gaze became fixed, and as the
clock struck he fell back as if he had
been sent to sleep with full mesmeric
honors.
1t does not suit everybody to hyp-
notize, nor does it suit everybody to
be hypnotized. The beginner, "for
fun" may find the patient go off into
commissions, and refuse to be "awak-
ened by tap or puff so it is best to
leave experimenting to competent
practitioners.